Murgen: open source ultrasound imaging

Things have been great for portable ultrasound! iSono developed a portable breast scanner, Lumify has been out, Clarius is making a wireless probe, ... and we're making awesome steps forward too ! Indeed... we've got our first ultrasound image with the murgen board =) Not a baby, mind you, but at least an echo coming from a part of a solid flat board immersed in front of the transducer. And we haven't tapped into the full capabilities of the board yet, so it can be greatly improved.

1. We assembled the different components, as below:

2. We setup the transducer in water, moved with a servo (in a sweets box.. yeah)

and bam! Image.

The hackaday project was updated to reflect the "how can I build this stuff?".

We getting a tad better echoes, and we have the proof that there's some action at the TGC level =)

Observations

• At 50V, we observed interesting echoes from the 4MHz transducer. An echo at 82us means that there was an obstacle at (1540*82e-6)/2, that's 63mm away from the transducer... where we put a reflector! Success.
• Echoes before and after the MD0100 are basically the very same. No attenuation. With the jumper on on J1 (TGC), on the high amplification, we do see the signals on P2/P3. But nothing after, on P5/P6. That would translate in a signal on P7.
• Just behind the MD100, there's a +-10V swing, which is completely attenuated by the CL component just behind it, to avoid to fry the TGC.

Issues

• The pulser is still an issue.
• Inverter is quick enough for our needs

More details on the github log of the project, and of the session.

Got some first ultrasound echoes for murgen... but the pulser is not mastered at all so far. That's quite some issue, I need to read more about this HV7360.

That being said... echoes, yeaaaay !

More details at ... https://github.com/kelu124/murgen-dev-kit/blob/master/Session_1.md

Murgen riding on a beaglebone black.

Hell yeah! The short has been identified, and bugs removed.

The classic "first edition board" bug, a short below the enveloppe detection, has been identified and solved. The recom component has shifted below the board, making the whole board thiner.

Now, we need to do the testing of the full chain !

Playing with the board ! We have done some progress here =) You can see on the right side the SMA for the transducer, the green connectors for the motor, and the RECOM on the bottom.

There was a short-circuit between 5V and GND, documenting it on GitHub, with images =)

That being said, there was a short article on ultrasounds, interesting read at http://www.maori.geek.nz/why-are-ultrasound-machines-so-expensive/ and on the corresponding thread on HNews (130 comments so far!). It focuses on the piezo, but raises some questions as well.

It's the 235th birthday of the stethoscope inventor. But Could Handheld Ultrasound Replace the Stethoscope?

A great read just popped out of my alerts: Microcontroller USB interfacing with MATLAB GUI for low cost medical ultrasound scanners . Interesting, if one is to interface a probe with MATLAB ;)

Other interesting articles:

• http://sci-hub.io/10.1109/ULTSYM.2015.0517 for a full fledge Smartphone Probe - awesome work too !
• Development of an embedded system and MATLAB-based GUI for online acquisition and analysis of ECG signal
• Integrating hardware and software for the development of microcontroller-based systems
• Design of a USB based multichannel, low cost data acquisition system using PIC microcontroller
• Low-cost USB interface for operant research using Arduino and Visual Basic

Another awesome read: Development of a wide band front endecho sounder receiver circuit - Master Thesis of Jatin Sharma. There's everything, from VHDL to schematics.

Blog is making progress first… I installed Disqus even with the mod_security issues. On Makake, tool seems broken so we’re letting it down.

On the fab side, we’ve been discussing, and preparing the work. We had some quotes, with a very kind gesture from them. Let’s see when we can get this started! I also played with Macrofab and their support for a 4-layer, that’s a real nice move from them.. but I’m feeling less sure with their own list of components.

Still on electronics, we were discussing about the pain to use some multilegged CMS – and we found some things to play with them on breadboards.

Murgen? That’s ongoing. #2 on HN, plus a smaller board in the pipe. Mostly onto documentation of the board so far! I also was toying with the idea of having a µC ( like PIC24FJ128GC010 and its high speed ADCs) right after the analog part – could be an additional board/cape stacked below (so with microcontrolleur and alimentation). It would then be able for example to stream data like a wifi camera, to receive the ping from the motor controler, ….